


< . ni kar’tayli gar darasuum . >

by halflingmerry



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Consensual Sex, Dreams, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon Fix-It, Rebelcaptain Secret Santa, Resolved Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, angst on the road to HEA, flitting through the tropes, partners-friends-lovers x ∞, so then reciprocal caregiving, some blood / injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:53:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28378002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halflingmerry/pseuds/halflingmerry
Summary: 《 "Why didn't you fire? You had a clear shot.""They would have shotyou!You wanted me to let them?""You wanted me to leave you?!""You're the only person in the Galaxy who hasn't!" 》Many phases and faces of a partnershipPrompt: "you're my best friend, and I don't want to lose you—but I love you"Dearmoprocrastinates: HAPPY REBELCAPTAIN SECRET SANTA 2020!!
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Comments: 24
Kudos: 50
Collections: The RebelCaptain Network Secret Santa Exchange





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moprocrastinates](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moprocrastinates/gifts).



> < . are you awake ? .
> 
> . yes are you ok ? .
> 
> . yeah just .  
>  . a lot of nothing out there .
> 
> . yeah .
> 
> . what are you up to ? .
> 
> . a lot of nothing in here too .
> 
> . that sounds ominous .
> 
> . wasnt meant to sorry .  
>  . boring without you around .
> 
> . what ? wartime espionage suddenly not enough for you ? .
> 
> . nar dralshy’a .
> 
> . yeah yeah put your money where your mouth is .  
>  . still there ? .
> 
> . not going anywhere .
> 
> . not right now . >

* * *

"No one visibly waiting to arrest us," said Leia, surveying the landing pad.

“That’s always good.” Jyn stepped onto the boarding ramp beside her. “I wasn’t just waiting for the all-clear, by the way.”

Leia smirked. “’Course not.” Her lips compressed, scanning the old tarmac. Since the battle, they wouldn’t be staying on Yavin 4 much longer. Jyn was complicatedly glad the base hadn’t moved before she got back.

“I think I will recommend Dune to the shock troopers,” said Leia distantly.

Jyn followed diligently. "Channel her drive for vengeance?”

“Hopefully.” Leia looked over at her. "I’m sorry we didn’t find your mother’s friend."

There’d been no reason to think they would. Nari had gone to Alderaan right after Alpinn. That was a lot of time for her to move on. It had just been hard not to hope… with all Sullust’s caves… “Well. I was so little. I might not know her if we had.” Jyn returned the look. “I’m sorry we didn’t find your sister.”

The tight smile Leia managed reminded Jyn of— “I figured she’d either be the shadow governor or not there at all. I could see her leading an expedition to find a new homeworld entirely. That’s the story I’m going to choose to think about.”

"Positivity check," said Verlaine as she finally joined them from powering down. “That we found _anybody_ is a karking miracle.”

Leia nodded. “Let alone so many.”

Jyn stopped herself from fiddling with her necklace. _(Trust the Force)_ “Would Winter need a geologist to survey new planets? Maybe Nari could be in your stor—”

A new voice said, "Jyn Erso."

The three women stopped in their tracks. Jyn refocused like a riflesight.

An old, possibly Republic-era MV-2 droid, refitted with half an astromech frame, finished rolling to the base of the ramp. "Jyn Erso," it repeated.

"Y-eah," said Jyn.

"I was asked to monitor for your return.”

Leia returned Jyn’s frown. They’d expected any greeting party to be for Leia. She was the one who'd lied to Dodonna to create and execute this mission—oh, and was actually a member of the Alliance. Whereas, Jyn—

"By whom?" said Verlaine.

The droid answered, "Captain Andor.”

Did the landing pad just go from night to day?

 _'Captain'—so he wasn't demoted or discharged—they'd've been idiots to do it…_ did it apply to Jyn, who hadn't been enlisted to be courtmartialed? would that apply to _this_ mission with Leia? _Why would Cassian…_

_ …Cassian… _

"Is he on Base?" asked Leia. _Thank you._ Jyn’s body seemed to be doing a carbonited impression.

"He is on Base," the droid confirmed. "He requested that you contact him once available."

_'Once available'… requested of her, not commanded the droid… oh, you…_

Jyn's voice (fittingly) went ahead without permission. "Go ahead; contact him."

The droid whirred away.

Jyn felt warmth. She looked down to see that Leia had taken her hand.

 _We’re just friends,_ she wanted to say (glancing, defense) to Leia and Verlaine.

But were they? Truly?

_because what’s only “just” about friends…?_

"I'm gonna work on a mission report," Leia said. "I'd like to run it by you before I submit. Whenever you're free. We're not exactly on a formal schedule." How amazing it must be, to be so certain of one's position and able to take full control… When it was Leia, Jyn had no resentment. Leia squeezed Jyn's hand and Jyn squeezed back.

"Maybe see you at Mess tomorrow," said Verlaine. She and Leia went off, leaving Jyn to follow the droid.

He must have been waiting. Maybe he’d been monitoring air traffic. Jyn had barely caught up to MV-2 when Cassian Andor appeared on the tarmac.

_Do you think anyone’s listening?_

Cassian looked… _(beautiful)_ —better than when she'd seen him last. That didn't take much. He'd been a mess. Pulled off Scarif at the last instant, both of them had burns, impact wounds and preliminary radiation poisoning. It was the prior injuries where his were more dire than hers. He'd needed ongoing bacta therapy, while Jyn’s were stopped to preserve the stuff. Ironically, more bacta meant his severe injuries healed more quickly than her milder ones. He wound up being discharged first.

So, when last she had seen him, he was in an induced coma, and she was supposed to be bedbound. Observation on her lapsed when the Death Star entered orbit. No one would care that she got up, went searching, found him; crawled onto his cot, and wrapped her body around his, like on Scarif. If the kyberlight got them after all, they'd still go together.

Last he'd last seen _her,_ according to the surveillance she'd later hacked, she was knocked out from a follow-up procedure. He'd sat at her bedside a full day and night, reading to her, dozing with his head on his arms on her mattress, and, for over an hour, just _talking,_ his body hunched over their joined hands. What she wouldn't have given to have heard him.

Then he'd been given a mission. Judgment for going _rogue_ deferred. And he'd taken it, before Jyn woke up. She didn't blame him for that. There was so much that she, the loner-survivor, felt responsible for. How must he, the soldier-martyr, feel? She'd woken up, taken that news in stride, and decided to hold off any decision of her own—on whether she was going to stay.

She must try not to dwell on their 'last' moments consciously together… in the elevator, on the beach… Those had been dying moments. Not something to build on. And who knew if what she'd seen, what she'd felt, hadn't been dependent on the _dying_ part?

Unexpectedly, Princess Kriffing Leia had approached Jyn and given _her_ a mission. Another unsanctioned one. Jyn couldn't remember the last time she'd been asked to do what she did for such a… pure cause. Even Rogue One, she'd simultaneously seized for herself and had thrust upon her. Leia asking for her help seeking Alderaanian survivors was a stunning moment. And the results: the Melodic Order and the Sullustan Enclave defended and reunified; Leia, Verlaine, and Jyn had dealt the Empire a few more blows; and Jyn… felt, like maybe she did have a place here. Even with Rogue unit gone.

Whether or not Cassian…

She'd expected that when she returned to Base One, she'd find Cassian had already come and gone again. Because wasn't that how her life went? Maybe they'd go on missing each other forever. Or they would only speak, at last, having remembered that their initial acquaintance, no matter how intense, had been only _five days._ That miraculous… thing… they'd… felt… seen… _(knownrestoredbeen)_ had faded as fast as it had been ~~discovered~~ imagined and that would be it. It would only make sense. A throatburning, skullcracking, heartbreaking kind of sense.

But here she was. And he was, too. And he was still… It was still true. She hadn’t imagined it. Same angular face, once (or thrice, per his file) -broken nose; mouth that seemed solidly, tightly downcast, making it all the more worldbreaking when it curved up; dark messy hair and soft beard shadow framing those haunted, haunting, always-moving, penetrating, wary (yet capable of so much trust, that had to be true) fathomless eyes. Greyer colours were the only evidence that these were not the same fatigues and field jacket she’d met him in. (Besides knowing he’d abandoned those on Scarif.) She didn’t know what to make of the absence of a holster. (With its strap circling his thigh and framing his—) (—and then also failing not to notice how, somehow, the same kind of belt that everyone wore, on him seemed to accent his narrow body and rather wonderful—)

_O **kay** , amygdala, we’re not teenaged anymore. And we weren’t this susceptible when we **were**._

Stop. It was Cassian. She didn’t think of Cassian this way. Maybe for an instant there at the end, but not _only_ that—and, see again: _dying moment._ Everything would break open and flood, heightened, but that didn’t mean it should (could) stay that way. Now, probably, neurochemical release from being apart and reunited was just being misinterpreted. She didn’t really think these things. That wasn’t her—wasn’t either of them.

It wasn’t. It wasn’t.

What brought her back down: he looked… closed, again. Distant and airtight. Like when she’d first met him. It had made her angry then—his looks plus control and detachment; clearly he knew and used it like he used everything else; and would be disproportionately, irrationally, evolutionarily effective on (many) others, too. (What had the note in his file, when she’d hacked it, said? it couldn’t really have been _weaponise handsomeness)_

It had been an irritation and a liability. Until it had stopped mattering entirely.

Now, the mask was back on.

That hurt.

She guessed she couldn’t have expected the galaxywidethrown openness that had unmoored them both ~~at the end~~ on Scarif. But surely they wouldn’t be back to square one?

No. No. There was the droid. And the immediacy of Cassian’s arrival. And the quick rising and falling of his chest, under dark jacket and pale tunic, suggesting he might have sprinted here.

The flicker of anxiety in his eyes, as he searched hers, gave her courage and pity. "Hi," she said.

"Hi." He seemed impassive. But maybe to keep a lid on…?

“Could Do we you go want somewhere to quiet eat?" they both said at once.

Jyn blinked. "Sorry." The corner of Cassian's mouth tilted the world by curving upward.

“Do Sure, _you_ where want should to we eat go?” they did it again.

"Pfassk!" said Jyn.

Cassian _(dammit, he was beautiful but was he always cute?)_ lifted his hand to indicate taking the floor. "I'm fine. Thought you might be hungry after flying. But we can go wherever you want. Walk outside—or I have private quarters."

Her mouth was dry again. "Your quarters." At the last second, "Maybe we'll bring food."

"Yeah. We can stop by Mess. All I have in are ration bars."

"Those are fine." Jyn didn't want to go to Mess. She didn't want to spend time with anyone else. She didn't want anything except…

"Okay."

One more interminable beat standing there, staring like starving porgs. Finally, looking like he had on Jedha (where they’d first discovered that apparently they just always were going to stay too physically close, keep unprecedentedly touching each other without setting off each other’s tripwires, and working with each other from combat to crowd navigation so instantly, so seamlessly in sync…) he tilted his head. Jyn stepped to his side.

They paused only for Cassian to thank MV-2. (Jyn remembered Cassian slamming his fists on the vault door, trying to fight what, over the comm, had already happened. Then still pull himself back up and come right back to help her.)

How had they survived it… How was that now past… How hadn't they spoken, how hadn't they looked or touched, how hadn't they died and been atomized into a single cloud…

Would they always have these overlays? …did she hope for no or yes…?

His quarters were all-but bare. She could have blamed it on packing up the base, but she just knew it was him. They sat, incongruously childlike, on opposite ends of his bed, untouching.

They started out tentative. They had to warm back up. Their shields had been constructed too well by them both. They wouldn’t vanish just because it was each other.

But, because it _was_ each other, they did lower. Slow but faster than with anyone else. They didn’t go down all the way, but the extent that they did…

They talked for hours. Maybe more than a day. It was the most either had spoken to anyone—the most either had _spoken_ —in years. She wasn’t used to smiling so much; it actually made her brow hurt. But it was good. She felt… warmer, and closer to some galactic center… than she’d learned to live with. And him… had she known he could be funny? A dry, understated humour; still… Another puzzle piece of what made him a leader people followed. Maybe hints of who he might have been, purely naturally, if not for war. _Ouch. No. Don’t think down that road. Focus instead—_ His eyes had warmed, so that even when his face went blank (default, to be expected) they stayed… crinkled at either end.

_Warm. So much warmer than anywhere else. Anyone else._

The conversation wasn’t strategic. Most wasn’t profound. But they wove in and out of such depths that, in retrospect, felt incredulous, dizzying, reckless. They even talked about Rogue One. It was only skimming the surface, they’d go deeper as time went on, but it was more than anyone else would have believed from either of them. More than they usually allowed within themselves. With each other— _by_ each other—it felt…

protected.

They forgot to eat. At some point, their knees touched.

They only stopped at last when Jyn remembered Leia and Cassian remembered Draven. And even then… how they might apply to …this.

The agreement they seemed to reach was, Cassian said, “The only crucial thing to me is that we’re a team. Everything else, I’ll take or leave.”

At the time, Jyn took that to mean that they shouldn’t risk anything else. Later, she’d wonder if that had been it at all.

* * *

Jyn plopped down into the co-pilot’s seat, propped her boots up on the console, and tore off a third of the ration bar with her teeth. “What the Force has been going on out here? Turbulence? Or are you actually a lousy pilot and they just let you do it anyway?”

Cassian rolled his eyes. But his hand strayed from the controls, toward her. “I was about to comm you. You’re right on time.”

“For?” No sooner had she turned her head, the viewscreen was filled with an explosion of colour.

Jyn gaped. With his slight smile—still a revelation every time—Cassian explained the nebular anomaly. “It’s a detour but I… wanted you to see it.”

 _Detour? From the mission? ‘Want’? For **me**?_ Wonders outside and within.

They passed the next moments or hours gazing, enrapt, just the occasional catcall as if the light display were an airshow.

Then they’d passed through the anomaly. Jyn discovered that, somewhere in there, she’d grabbed Cassian’s hand.

He looked over without letting go. “Congratulations. On your first mission on our new ship.”

She flexed her fingers, and returned a smirk. “You too. Partner.”

* * *

Sometimes, when Jyn couldn’t be in the shared barracks—couldn’t stand to be anywhere—she’d go to the ship. It was that or cram herself into an airvent; somewhere enclosed where no one could get above or behind her. The ship was better, though, because… it was… theirs. Only once did she wake up to see him reaching toward her. She literally growled and he moved away. Add it to the list of things not to talk about.

* * *

Talking the talk? No problem. Keeping her nerve? Easy. Acting helpless? Grrrr but done. Looking the part…

 _"Ib’tuur jatne tuur ash’ad kyr’amur!"_ Jyn roared and threw down the instruments with a clatter.

Five, four, three, two, Cassian's head half-appeared through the portal. "You okay?"

Jyn turned from the mirror screen and glared at him.

Captain Unreadable put his hand over his mouth like he had that time Kay slapped him.

 _" **Shut up** ,"_ Jyn barked, turning her scowl back to the indignity. "They forced me to sit through retraining on everything else! Why did they just assume I knew how to do _this?!"_

Expression schooled, Cassian came the rest of the way into the cabin. "Want help?"

Jyn, sullen, "Do you know how?"

"Yes." He sat in front of her. He surveyed her with analytical calm and reached for a cleansing wipe. "What do you want to go for?"

"You know the brief," Jyn grumbled, bracing herself to be… uggghhh… _passive._

But through her gritted teeth, she found letting _him…_ attend, to her… to… be…

"Yeah, but the character is yours. You have to be convinced to convince anyone." He set down the now garishly-coloured wipe. "How are you filling the brief?"

Jyn bit her lip. This felt like child's games. It made her realise that, despite her retorts to Draven, there was a difference after all between all the aliases she'd had over the years and actually playing someone else. She walked Cassian through it with grumpy reluctance, wondering again, when it seemed so far from herself, wouldn’t they be better off getting some else entirely?

But Cassian didn’t scoff, and she braced her shoulders as he got to work. There was a definite intimacy to this… her not knowing what he was doing… but knowing _he_ knew, and wouldn't betray her with it. When she looked at last in the screen, it was like he'd changed her bone structure. She looked filled in, softened, like she was living a gentler, healthier life. It was unnerving—how unlike all her ideas of herself. But it also meant the mark's perceptions would do so much work before she had to. "Uh… Yeah. It's good."

"Good. I'm gonna draw some lines for you to fill in yourself, okay? You may not like me messing around your eyes."

She did know how to do eye liner, though of the war paint, glare-accentuation I-can-see-through-your-fucking-skin variety. Her only technique had been designed, for years, to make herself look older, harder, more angular. How to forbid, precisely ( _emphatically_ ) not to invite.

"You do it," she said. "I trust you."

When she looked into the viewer again, she nearly bolted as if someone else had burst into the room. The gentle-faced, enormously dewy-eyed person staring back at her…

"How do you know how to do this?" said Jyn.

"Training. One of my specialty contacts."

"Why were you trained in cosmetics?"

" 'Cause I've had to wear a lot. Look up."

"This kind?"

"Sometimes. Wanna choose your own—"

_"No!"_

Cassian very nearly laughed. He didn't ask her to pout or pucker or otherwise trigger her gag reflex. The touch of his pad on her parted lips made her sink back a little in her seat.

"Check for me," he murmured. This time she was somewhat prepared for the face that looked back at her. Any lingering skepticism she'd had about believability vanished. Who knew she could seem so…? She tried not to lean into his touch as he did whatever arcana would seal the transformation.

"You're done." With dextrous fingers, he started weeding out the instruments for her to take with her for maintenance. "How do you feel?"

"I think I could do with a little more morale," she said, self-defense turning into cheekiness. "You could this to yourself to keep me company."

Dryly, "Not this time, thanks. I'll show you the holos."

She watched him, wondering how any such contouring wizardry could possibly alter him. Though he was too good at seeming to change himself, without any—down to the bone. If they both knew how to put on masks like this, did that also mean they knew how to take them off?

She shook off her ridiculous desire to ask if this version, this possibility, of her, was an improvement. That was too fragile a question for her to admit, even to him. But he answered anyway: when she’d finished the mission. When he was flying them home, and she finally entered the cockpit to join him, after tending her own wounds (her insistence) and removed the makeup. His expression when he raised his face to hers… relief and welcome and admiration and warmth and light… Yes. They both preferred masks off.

* * *

He tried not to flinch and did it anyway.

"I told you not to move." Jyn stayed concentrating on the sterilising swab.

"Sorry," Cassian muttered, gripping his knees. "You know. Treating wounds; worse than getting them."

"Yeah. I know you." A few more strokes, and she was satisfied; the gash on his temple was now clean. She chucked the swab down the incinerator and took another critical look. She’d debrided the too-damaged skin and freshened the edges; what was left was all healthy, but it might not be enough to hold stitching…

"You're making me feel like a Hapan puzzle box," said Cassian.

"You _are_ a Hapan puzzle box. I think we should leave the rest to a med droid."

"I'd rather take care of it now." Of course he did. Even when he was the most critical case on the planet, he didn't like taking resources from anyone else. "Give me the medpac—I can do it."

Jyn swatted his hand aside. "I'll do it, _di’kutla ori’vod.”_ She stitched both ends, halving the wound. The rest—"We’ll just have to keep rebandaging until it granulates."

Cassian—who of course had refused anything more than topical numbing agent, see: above—consciously relaxed his face. The resting frown seemed less furrowed today. "You've gotten really good at that."

"It's a lot easier on someone else." She knew they'd both had to stitch themselves up in the field. She wouldn't really get on his arse about not going for more ~~luxury~~ comfort. Having a partner while sitting in their own ship in hyperspace was mercies aplenty.

A silence, which Cassian broke at last. “I’ve meant to ask how you know Mando’a.”

Oh. Um. “…How do _you?”_

“It’s become the language of subversion on Coruscant and other major cities. Which I guess would be where you got it, too. Not sure actual Mandalorians would be pleased. But it’s been useful for dissidents as well as—”

“Criminals.”

 _“Other_ criminals.”

The back of her neck warmed like it did whenever he defended her. “I didn’t know you knew it.”

One of those fractional smiles. “Enough to know when I’m being called an idiot.”

 _And ‘special friend’?_ She should’ve gone for _partner._ Except that could equally mean _husband._

* * *

She couldn't remember how it started. She thinks she may have done it while not fully awake. Neither had tried writing out their dreams before; neither wanted to stay in them when they didn't have to. But they started exchanging them. At first when they were physically apart, but occasionally when they were together, too; typing at each other across the same room because speech was impossible but they still wanted, needed, to communicate. To connect.

> < . ys one .  
>  . so . I had fear virus as a kid .  
>  . ‘had’, read: 'was given' . not CIS standard practice but you know the rim .  
>  . I passed the test . alliance meds cured any lingering bits when I enlisted but I still have one dream sometimes . the strangest one because it was . calm .  
>  . there's a dead thing with a cavity in it . in the middle of that something glows . I use my knife to widen the gap . the glowing thing comes out . it’s .  
>  . a flower maybe . shaped like a star . made of crystal or glass . if I leave it there the dead thing will be transformed . I'm suddenly sure it wouldn't want to be . I try to cut the flower out . it pricks my hand . before I can pull back to look at it its . thorn its .  
>  . splinter is gone into my skin . I cut my palm where it's left a mark but the flesh keeps healing . I can't get it out . I see myself through the eyes of the corpse . the glow is in me now traveling up my arm . I wake right before it reaches my heart .  
>  . I still feel it . awake . a shard right there . changing me . The only way to slow down transformation is to keep my heart cold .
> 
> .  
>  . well counselors would love that one .
> 
> . yeah . don’t think i need them to analyze it for me .  
>  . don't talk about the part with the CIS . there's enough anti-sep sentiment already . most people in the rebellion dont know I was one wanna keep it like that .
> 
> . i promise . >

* * *

Through the raging snow-flecked wind, looming stone giants only revealed themselves almost too late. Cassian practically dragged the ship forward by his arms. Jyn braced one hand on the console, the other above her head, wishing she could do more—something—anything, to help.

“Four o’clock!” she reflexively shouted.

Cassian was already wrestling the controls. He couldn’t keep the wing from clipping the outcrop. “Hold on!” His hoarse bark that she’d irrationally hoped never to hear again. _We’re coming down hard_

They hit the ground.

In the scheme of crashes, it was miraculously mild. She lifted her head, ears ringing, blinking until she could see. She saw… nothing. She wondered if she was concussed. She checked and realised, from the upmost part of the window, that it was snow, going all the way over the viewscreen. Cassian, sensibly, hadn’t tried to clear all obstacles: he’d picked a good one and control-crashed them into a thick snowbank. They’d have to dig themselves out, but the impact itself had been well-cushioned. The ship’s flashing lights showed no integrity alerts. Jyn likewise had the wind knocked out of her but nothing broken. She raised her relieved, wondering eyes to Cassian.

Focused entirely on bracing the ship, he hadn’t managed to brace himself. He’d been thrown hard against his own restraints. They’d certainly saved his life, but there was a flush already visible under his collar, heralding bruises (whiplash? broken ribs? _Please…)_ His eyes were closed. His breathing was shallow. Stopping her heart, there was blood running from his nose and mouth.

_No no no no no_

Jyn tore herself out of her own restraints and launched herself to his side. She grabbed his shoulder and face. “Cassian!”

He was unresponsive for twenty of the longest seconds of Jyn’s life. Punching him was not a good option. She didn’t want to leave him to collect snow to dump over his head. She didn’t think she could get him as a deadweight out of the chair. In desperation, she slammed her lips to his.

Judging from when he started returning it, he woke mid-kiss. Jyn broke it, pulling back, and gasped, “Thank the Force. Help me get you out of these.”

He fumbled to release his restraints. He draped his arm over her shoulders as she instructed, took her help standing, and limped where she led him. He was in some shock: he didn’t try to fend for himself, no matter that she’d become the better battlefield medic. He sat motionless as she tended his head and bound his chest to brace him until they could get back to base to check internal injury. (Working too fierce and fast to allow herself any focus on the history carved on him there, no matter how many scars tried to catch her eye.) Thank the Force, the blood wasn't coming up from inside. On his mouth was from biting his tongue. The nosebleed seemed from tension. More worrying was when she cupped the side of his head, to ease him down; he actually lay where she put him and fell asleep.

He still found a moment, right before, to reach out, cup her face, and wipe his blood (that she'd forgotten) from her lips. 

He was back to himself within a few hours. Ignoring her saying not to, he joined her digging out the ship. Before, during, and after their self-rescue; during and after his on-base recuperation; she never figured out if he remembered the kiss.

* * *

Consciousness dawned in shades of grey. Slate ground, shadow cold, silver air, pallor around, and numbness everywhere else.

Jyn tried to move her extremities. Toes were hard to feel. Fingers…

Were enclosed.

As was the rest of her. Restrained.

For an instant, she panicked. Her mind flashed to four different ways of breaking free.

To her terrified rage, her body cooperated with none of them.

…And she realised, it wasn’t because it was cold. It was because… at her back, and around her torso, enclosing her hand, was _warmth._ That her body couldn’t bring itself to leave.

She halfheartedly flexed. The restraint reacted at once. And it wasn’t any restraint. It was…

“It’s just me,” Cassian’s whisper tickled her ear. His breath was warm there. “Just me.”

Jyn melted, resistance and all. “What’s?” …was all she could manage through dry, numb lips and tongue.

“Hang on.” She figured out that his arms were under hers, around her body, with his hands enfolding hers against her chest. She could tell when he started to pull away.

She tightened all of herself that she could feel to keep him there. “Don’t,” she gasped. _Don’t go._

He hugged her. “I’ll be right back.”

With a will, she let him slide free, astonished at her own level of panic. Was it fear that made her suddenly so cold again at the loss of him?

He was instantly back, setting an open canteen to her lips. Once she’d drank, he slipped his arms back around her. Her arms and now his were both directly around her body, rather than through any sleeves. The backs of her thermals and the fronts of his were undone, making the thermal gear a cocoon for them both. He closed all circuits and seams and pressed his chest to her back. Any cold that had sliced in was banished by his skin on hers.

“Where are we?” Jyn managed at last in a rasp.

“Hoth. You missed your check-in. I came to find you. It’s storming now… no way to get a signal back to base, but we’ve got shelter ’til I try again in the morning.”

‘Shelter’ proved the intended-to-be-one-person pup tent that he’d set up literally inside a snowdrift. They’d have to cram together no matter what. But to have him _holding_ her, with nothing between them from waist to neck…

“You were freezing,” he whispered. “Sorry. I would’ve rather… had your consent… but—”

“Retroactively granted,” she whispered. “Thank you.” She had never felt anything better than his heat seeping through her. The only thing to compare was the ceasing of pain. And… the embrace itself… “I don’t know what happened.”

“We’ll figure it out later.”

“I officially hate snow.”

His exhalation stirred the hair on the nape of her neck. “We’ve had some problems with it lately, haven’t we.”

“Thanks… You found me.”

“Always.”

* * *

> < . first thing I remember, I thought I was dead .  
>  . I don't mean I woke up injured or in rubble . I walked and talked and ate and cried and slept . I just knew those were only tricks to fool everyone else into thinking I was alive . but I knew better .  
>  . I thought my mother had done it . I never knew her name . already I couldn't remember her face . but I knew . she'd picked me up dead and set me back down and made me keep going .  
>  . people'd said I must have seen her sacrifice herself for me and was a kid rationalizing . yeah probably .  
>  . then I really almost died . awake for it old enough to know about it understand and remember . the landmine and everything after . i was deaf for weeks and didn't know how to communicate with anyone .  
>  . everyone always said I was such a brave kid . I wasn't . courage isn’t lack of fear . I'd just known that I was dead so nothing could kill me .  
>  . hurt like that made me fear again . I couldn't be hurting like that if I was dead . couldn't have felt nearly dying if I'd done it already . couldn't have consequences like the operations and the deafness and the others . .  
>  . I was PISSED . I felt lied to and stolen from and like I could never move again w.o literally falling in shreds . like I'd been powerful and now I was nothing .  
>  . like my mom was not only gone but had never existed .
> 
> .  
>  . what changed your mind? .
> 
> . did it change? .
> 
> .
> 
> . of course it did . ignore me .  
>  . saw enough real death I guess to better define it . redefine 'life' too .
> 
> . dare I ask ? .
> 
> . they're just functions . like everything else . demarcated by action and possibility . not some other truth .
> 
> .
> 
> .
> 
> . was there a dream in there ? .
> 
> .  
>  . my mother .  
>  . no face, no colors, no recognition . just her . picking me up and setting me back down .  
>  .  
>  . I guess maybe I did believe in the Force before you .  
>  . I just called it her . >

* * *

They took turns covering each other as they tore up the ramp. Cassian bolted for the cockpit while Jyn slammed the lock panel. The engine roar covered her last shot. The ramp hadn't finished closing before Cassian had them climbing, and Jyn dove foreward and into the co-pilot's seat. Jyn rapid-sliced their codes before they hit atmo. Cassian punched the drive. Stars became starlines.

They were in hyperspace. Safe.

For a moment both sat, hands hovering over their respective controls.

Then Jyn spun in her chair to face Cassian and yelled, "What the Hell was that?"

He blinked, at a loss. "Which hell what?"

"You came back for me! You should've gone straight to the ship! You didn't trust me to meet you there?"

"It’s not a matter of trust." Where other peoples' faces turned red, Cassian's always turned grey. His mouth tightened even harder than its resting frown. "But if we're talking about that: why didn't you fire? You had a clear shot."

"They would have shot _you!_ You wanted me to let them?"

"You wanted me to leave you?!"

"You're the only person in the Galaxy who hasn't!"

That silenced both of them. He turned his head slowly, slightly, to face her all the way. Jyn hadn't meant… she…

"You're the only person," she finally repeated. "Even the ones who were supposed to come back… you're the only one who always has." She mustered back a bit of anger to say, "But this time you _should_ have. I could have gotten away myself."

When his voice came at last, it was hoarse. "I know you can. _I_ can't."

Too many feelings colliding inside of her… staring at his face, not his features but the lines between them, in his brows, his mouth, around his eyes… _how old are you again? how old am I? how much of our lives weren’t together?_

Jyn failed to stop herself whispering, "Oh Force, she was right."

Cassian just looked at her.

Jyn wasn't ready to tell him about what Bey, Joma, and Ro had said. She should. She should have for weeks. But she couldn't. _I can't. Come on. Please._

Fuck.

"Someone told me," muttered Jyn, mouth dry as Jedha. "That… ugh. That people talk. On Base. About us."

"People talk on Base about everyone." He didn't sound dismissive. To anyone else, he probably didn't sound like anything.

"I know. But there might be, a… risk. Of Command. Splitting us up."

"They won't." It was so immediate and final, Jyn’s eyes flickered up to search his face. Cassian looked down at the controls. Bowing his head to the angle that always made her want to comb her fingers up his neck into his hair.

"You've already dealt with this." She felt so stupid. "With Draven."

"And him on our—my behalf." Cassian looked away from the controls as well. Hyperspace backlit his profile. "Our relationship was discussed. The… concern that we would never be able to… designate the other as expendable. Mothma forbid anyone from talking to you and me about _sacrifice.”_ Jyn wanted her reaction to be a snort. Instead, she sat very still to avoid grabbing him—his tense shoulders—in both her arms. “She ruled our partnership up solely to us. And she and Draven both talked to me, privately, over the years. About… my… disconnection. Might damage my longevity."

_What if I did try to hold you? Right now?_

"I didn't know," she said at last. "About Draven." That surprised her more than Mon feking Mothma. Of course, _Draven_ hadn't once said to her, _I won't forget what we did to you._

"I don't think Draven was supposed to tell me." He finally glanced at her. "But _I_ should have told _you._ I'm sorry. I… didn't want—"

"I get it. It's okay."

He put out his hand. Jyn laid her palm on his, scar-for-scar.

It was hard to tell whose fingers curled first, to intertwine. Maybe they both did it at once. For the length of several starlines, they sat that way in silence.

"You're not," said Jyn. "You know that?"

"Not what?"

"Expendable. Not just for me."

He said nothing. She'd count that as a victory: lack of argument.

The silence, though, reverberated with how long he _had_ been. Part of his chosen(?) role. Jyn the survivor had also been angered by that, at first. Then felt herself lacking compared to it. Then, finally…

She tried to downshift. "I'm glad to know. That they're leaving it to us. I mean, they bloody better. But it's still good they wouldn't try."

"I think they've learned not to put either of us in the position where we'll disobey."

Cassian had already proved he would ally himself with her, even against them. How many people got to prove themselves to each other as completely as Cassian had proved himself to Jyn? She wondered if he could possibly feel that way about her. Finally, she murmured, "They'd be idiots. We get it done."

He quite possibly squeezed her hand.

Another silence, more companionable. They watched hyperspace for dynamics and gradations others didn't even look for. It felt so good, so natural, that Jyn almost didn't notice Cassian's thumb had started running over hers. (Trigger callouses finding each other, roughened skin suddenly soft.)

When it caught up to her, she turned again to look at him.

Cassian let go. He said, "A few hours left. I might try to sleep."

She knew he slept better in hyperspace than anywhere else. _The one place you can't be caught._ "Okay."

As Cassian stood and moved past, his hand brushed her shoulder.

_I know where your father is. We gotta go._

Then he was out of the cockpit, and Jyn was left to gaze at hyperspace.

* * *

> It was beautiful. That was the most terrible thing. Unlike Jedha where it was nothing but horror, the extinction-annihilation of Scarif looked lovely. The tower dissolved and slipped away like sand. The ocean burned into massive clouds. The killing light wasn't so unlike a sunset. Just coming for them. It would be upon them soon.
> 
> …'Them'… wait… There was… there was supposed to be…
> 
> Jyn's hands grasped nothing. She stared. Cassian, before her, looking at her, with the smallest, most star-warming, Galaxy-shifting smile she'd ever known. Before her eyes, in her arms, he disintegrated like the tower in the beam. He melted away. She scrambled and screamed for him. Not thinking that when the sea vapour arrived they'd be gone anyway. Thinking only that before it arrived, she had to find him, had to get him back

* * *

She lay under the covers. Too many covers. All the covers. She needed their weight to keep her from disintegrating and floating away. Press her down, down, instead; stamp her on the world.

She crushed her knees to her chest, holding herself like she was the pin of a grenade. The only thing in that cave with her was the pillow that didn't smell enough like him. No scent, no strand of hair, no imprint. She hugged it anyway. There was some fiber, some atom of him; there had to be. She didn't care how regimental he was with his lack of belongings. There was _something._ And she would imbue it with quantum entanglement. If she held on to the theoretical particle of him, here, it meant the other molecules were still together out there. As him. Alive. And would come back. He always came back.

When she heard the portal access, she didn't fall for it. She'd dreamed this already. Over and over, doing nothing else, except fleeting moments of forcing herself into the 'fresher to swallow a little water to retch and pass it back out. She didn't know how long it had been. She just knew that she couldn't trust anything indirect. And she couldn't stand not knowing, but if the only report was of the intolerable, then…

The phantom alert. The door sliding open.

_please, Force  
I want to trust  
Mama said to  
help_

Like an animal peeking out of its den, she opened her eyes.

It was Cassian. Stained and ragged, sporting a crusted head wound, what looked like stitches on his ear and contusions on his neck. She'd seen him beaten up worse, but she'd never seen him looking quite such a bedraggled mess.

He froze, seeing her, and Jyn Erso broke into sobs. — _wails,_ the likes of which she hadn't made even since before Lyra died.

Cassian let his savaged parka and muddied gear bag drop to the floor. Jyn shoved aside the blankets, kneeling up on the mattress.

They crashed together like stars.

He badly needed to wash. He smelled terrible. She pushed him just like that onto the bed. He returned each one of her kisses with equal fire. (Unhesitating, with certainty, like they’d done it before—all along.) She grabbed him in her arms and rolled him on top of her. With his help, she dug her hands in his clothes, wrestling and opening every layer as he did the same to her. When she wrapped her hand around him, his stuttered breath brought his chest to hers. Keeping the control she took and he granted, she moved and pressed him to her 'til she parted.

Her sexual education ’til now had been… defensive. She’d never believed accounts that the mind and spirit can be passionately wanting yet the body not cooperate. She’d assumed that if the want was real, the physical must follow; and if it didn’t, it must mean the emotions weren’t genuine. Now, abruptly, she learned more. The desire was real and intense but other things were at play. In this instance: fasting, dehydration, exhaustion, and grief.

If they did it his way, Jyn knew what Cassian would do. He’d have her rest and rehydrate while he cleaned himself up. He’d go down on her, with something soothing if more was needed beyond his attentive hands and thorough tongue. He’d find some good lubricant if it took him going to Medical for it. _If_ he agreed to pursuing penetration right away, again, at all. He would make it—their first time, every time—incredible.

Jyn didn’t want incredible. She wanted _proof._ She wanted unquestionable wakefulness, absolute reality. Confirm he was here and with her and alive. So when her overtired body’s response to penetration was less than easy, and he instantly, utterly froze, she grabbed him in both her hands, pulled him back to her, and gasped, “Don’t stop. Please. Please.”

He didn’t move… which meant he didn’t pull away. He raised his hand to touch her face, vast dark eyes urgently searching her too-bright ones.

Her mind was a tangle. Did this mean the only thing she trusted above all other things, to be _real,_ was _pain?_ Would she make him an accessory when hurting her was something she knew (from his lips, waking and in sleep) he most feared? Or did she think this could be an emergency exit? As if, if it wasn’t ideal, they could come back from it. Avoid addiction. Be able to keep working and living without being consumed. As if they could do this and avoid the inevitable change that might—among all the other ways—make her lose him.

Nevermind the sudden inner, silent admission that she already thought about this; when she was trying to sleep; when she got herself off in the sonic; whenever she looked at him while he was looking elsewhere…

But suddenly, she realised those thoughts were one-sided. As if she’d be alone in this. She wasn’t. It was exactly the reality she sought: he was here. _He was here._ He’d come back to her and they were together. No matter how she’d had to acclimate to unrelenting solitude, never relying or trusting anyone else… from the start, she and Cassian had been each other’s unlooked-for, given-up-on, transcendent restoration of _connection._ Whether in pleasure or pain, in all things, in all ways, they were partners. It didn’t matter how uncharted or unidealised anything else was. They were unified. For both of them, beyond anything their abused minds had been forced to rationalise as ‘inevitable’ or ‘undeserved’ or ‘dangerous’… This didn’t change that. This wasn’t further than they’d already gone.

Or she wanted him so badly in that moment, she’d believe that. Fine. For this moment. Push back the fear of loss. Fear of losing what they may or may not even dare to have. _Just try. Let me try. Try with me._

So she saw, in his eyes, when he decided to do what she asked. But not quite _as_ she asked. He acceded to staying right there; but he didn’t agree to power through. He didn’t rush. He laved her neck where she’d reacted most, until she actually relaxed. He added his hand below to help and monitor, and went careful and slow, easing them together.

Then she was filled, he’d bottomed out, and fuck… so much for any plans. They dipped into her deepest well, flowing when she began to move with him, soothing and wetting and freeing them for… for….

How could she imagine that any way between them, fantastical or not, wouldn’t be something she kept thinking of… kept wanting more and more…

She rode him softly from below, vicing her thighs to hold him and arching off the mattress to his hands and mouth. He bent his forehead to her throat in his labour. She cradled his filthy, beautiful head. Not stopping when she clenched and spasmed around him; not when his gasp was almost a groan—the loudest sound she’d pulled out of him, rising her highest still—and he doubled over, over her; thrusting hard, more, up, more, up into her, like the fire breaking crest was farther inside than they could go; and he spent thudding out within her and sank at last upon her, shaking; breath hard, still holding them together, warm and close and strong.

She found, in epiphany, that it still convinced her. It didn’t hurt. And it was still, so, very, real.

She kept him in her. She wrung more out of him than his body could actually do. She sank as he softened inside her and still held him there. He never, never tried to leave.

She drifted in and out of sleep with him in her core, his hips in her legs, arms around each other, tight. Her hand fell asleep from how tight she'd tangled it in his engine-grease unwashed hair. She breathed him in, welcoming the tastes and smells—metal and blood and blasters and engines and bad rations and overtrapped body odour and a bitter medicine of sharp flora. His fingers spread to cover as much of her as they could. His palms moulded to her perfectly. His arms were steady, protective and needful both, holding her into him as if the mattress and the planet and gravity were immaterial, and without hanging on to each other they'd fall away. She read his breathing; when he steadied and slowed meant drifting off; a violent catch meant waking before he remembered where he was and he hugged her tighter; the restrained inhale when she gripped him on a bruise or her walls overstimulated his nerves—at which, also, he never tried whatsoever to pull away.

Then, suddenly, Cassian was no longer holding her. He was leaning over her, shouting her name. She realised that she’d blacked out. When she said his name, he collapsed upon her, burying his face in her stomach, gasping like sobs. She was astonished that her condition while waiting for him was exactly reflected: that the prospect of losing her gave him (why would she think it wouldn’t?) the same cataclysmic horror.

_So we shouldn’t be risking… for both our sakes… no, we…_

He calmed down. He asked the door control how long between his entrance and any previous access. The door answered: _seventy-nine hours._ Jyn blinked at herself. Cassian looked as close to weeping as she’d ever seen. She’d waited in here for three days.

He pulled himself together. He stood and drew her upright. He practically draped her over his shoulder. He brought her into the 'fresher. He hit the panel that turned the water tank on its side, filled it hot, and eased her into it. He vanished back out and returned with a full canteen and his whole stash of ration bars. He made her slowly eat and drink while he—out of the karking sink, not to so befoul the bath—scrubbed himself clean.

He finally joined her in the tub. He started to embrace her but she pulled away, grabbed the cleansers, and gave more careful attendance to his wounds. Her ministrations unknotted him from shoulders down.

At last, she set the dressings aside, murmuring him done. He immediately wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. She could feel his heart pound to hers. She slid her body along his, within his embrace, until her arms circled his neck and her legs, his waist. As she began to draw herself against him, he stopped her and whispered, "I didn't mean you have to—" But she kissed his torn ear and whispered back, "Yes. I do."

His hands melted down her shoulders, her back, releasing—agreeing. She bore down and took him, now clean and cleansing and smooth and deep and slow. Before had been hurling a grappling hook to catch on from freefall. Now, the tether was secure. And knowing neither would fall past, they were freed… this time, truly, to feel each other. The ambrosia of him so hard inside her, every slendercaressing inch; the echoes singing outward to the rest of their bodies, from her palms on his chest, (that blasterburn too near his heart… she knew exactly when he’d been given that…) —in the depths of her belly, the back of her scalp, singing between her ribs…

This time she embraced the pleasure, because it was too late, right? If this would make her lose him… but how could it when…? whatever, don’t think that right now. The truth was, she couldn’t not do this anymore. Not right now. So. Think how unbelievably arousing she found it to have her head above his, their bodies upright, bellies pressed together, grinding abs and cores; her total control of their thrusts and rolls; his impulsion around her, within her, opposing synchrony, his hands across her back while his mouth was on her chest, his palms cupping her hips leading or following her waves upon him—both at once. He closed his eyes, rested his head on her breast as he panted for breath. Then he beautifully put back his head, arching, giving her his throat, and looked up into her eyes with an expression so utterly open. Like no one else had seen, no one else had shown, nothing else in the universe but what they'd seen in each other in that elevator, and also breathtakingly new.

She came so hard upon him, her bones turned to sand. She fell limply over him, folded into his chest. After catching her breath, she offered to still help him come, too. He kissed her and dismissed the offer; folded her to all the battered loosened rawness of himself, and held her—like he never needed her to do anything, be anyone, except exactly whoever and whatever she already was; and he would be there with her forever.

He woke her when she faded out again, but she was just tired; no more fainting. Tired and abjectly, bone-meltingly, orgastically, Force-convertingly relieved. She was sort of conscious when he drained the water, wrapped her in a towel, carried her to the bed, and lay down with her to cover them both in blankets. When he took her in his tightmuscled arms and breathed her through to full, deep, beautiful sleep.

The next waking cycle (there was no Time in his quarters), he explained how it had gone sideways, how he'd known they'd assume he was dead… and why he'd let them. And how he was so sorry. Jyn lifted a shoulder and said she understood.

They dressed, went out, had a long, slow, proper meal. She walked him to his debriefing and took herself to medbay for a course of antifungals and antibiotics—just in case, even though she felt _(great)_ —and his sex had probably been the cleanest part of him.

They found each other again, had another meal, walked back to barracks… and instead of turning left to go together to his quarters, she turned right to continue solo to her own.

She barely slept for the pain of not being held by him. But she was positive this was the only safe way.

They reunited the next day like nothing had happened. Neither ever acknowledged that they'd had sex at all.

* * *

She frequently reread the ones he sent her. There was only one of her own she ever brought herself to glance at again.

> < . I don't know. Does anyone really have 'nice' dreams? .  
>  . I guess there was one .  
>  . I'm a kid on Lah'mu. I'm exploring a cave .  
>  . That's it. Nothing special. It's a cave in the cove I played in when we . were there. Mom took me into it once. Taught me what kind it was, how it had shaped, how the tide worked inside it, how to tell when it was safe to go in and when to come out, things about its age and what it could tell us about the formation of the whole planet. .  
>  . In my dream, I didn't have to worry about the tide. I just went in and in and in farther and farther. The tide came and went and I was underwater but I could breathe it was fine like flying, and there were bioluminescent flora all around me, and caverns shining with crystal, and I could hear my Mom's voice, excited in the future when I'd recount it to her but overlaid right then as I was still there, so proud of my scientific observations. And deeper and deeper I went and it wasn't frightening it was beautiful and I was getting closer and closer to some incredible center .  
>  . of course I wake up without reaching it but .  
>  .  
>  . I don't .  
>  .  
>  . Maybe it wasn't the dream. Maybe it was the moment after I woke up and for just a second I thought I was back again. I still had them alive with me and none of the rest had happened. .  
>  . Then of course it comes crashing back all the worse so maybe that WAS a bad one. .  
>  .  
>  . See what I mean ? . >

* * *

She sat alone in the cockpit, and her skin hurt. Or… not hurt, but… she couldn’t stand something about it. She didn’t know how to make it stop.

She got up and went aft.

The only way she could’ve got into the cabin without him immediately waking would be if he’d actually obeyed her order and taken the pills. (But he always did, didn’t he? Follow her orders. Always.)

She walked to the bunks and knelt beside the lower one. Of course he’d go for the one he could instantly spring out of.

She watched him breathe.

His long, scarred body, its angles and lines… she hated Imperial uniforms but the first time she’d seen his shoulderblades in one, the tense squaring he always carried there… His chest rose and fell enough to show the shape of him through his tunic. And what she knew now; had seen, had pressed and touched… had kissed...

Drawn as a satellite, she leaned over and put her head on his chest.

She listened to his heartbeat and breath. Felt the curving planes of him, the muscles and sinews and bones. Imagined him waking and embracing her… if only she wouldn’t have to pull away…

She crawled onto the bunk in all the spaces where he wasn’t, filling them with herself, and pressed herself against him.

When he turned to enfold her, she decided that it was in his sleep, so she could stay.

She hung onto that decision even when she fell asleep and woke again and he’d left for the cockpit, first.

* * *

> < . only 1 recurring .  
>  . I'm standing in the middle of .  
>  . a circle of . monsters .  
>  . they're coming closer and closer with gaping mouths and gnashing teeth and killing hands .  
>  . but I have a blaster . I figure out how to shoot as many as will be enough to keep the wave from breaking . enough to buy a moment before the next line of them . one wave of them at a time .  
>  . so I fire .  
>  . and I keep firing .  
>  . but it doesn't do anything .  
>  . I aim right at them and nothing happens . they aren't hit . they don’t fall .  
>  . i try harder and harder and harder as if I can concentrate enough to force the blaster to work . but it just doesn't .  
>  . they keep getting closer and theres nothing I can do .  
>  . just coming and coming and I almost wish they'd just get here already to finish me but it's always the closing in .  
>  .  
>  . getting older meant there's sometimes the variation .  
>  .t the blaster WILL work but I can't shoot because .  
>  . shooting them will just change them .  
>  . make them transform .  
>  . into something worse .
> 
> . I get the first bit . not sure about the second .
> 
> . maybe its maturity .  
>  . realizing that shooting someone transforms them .  
>  . into something dead . >

* * *

Cassian stopped firing. Jyn’s heart froze, but she couldn’t spare a look back. She picked off her remaining two and finally could whirl to make sure he was alive.

He was. In fact, still fighting. For some reason, Cassian had switched to using his blasterrifle as a bludgeon. She raised her blaster to cover him (like he’d been supposed to be covering her). He wasn’t her equal in hand-to-hand, but… was that one of _her_ moves he’d just pretty-well executed? He took two down. Another was suddenly rising behind him.

Jyn dove in between him and the blade. She knocked Cassian over to get him clear. She set to with her blaster and truncheon on the intended murderer and anyone who remained. A breathless second, guarding him, to make sure they were clear. She stuck her truncheon in her belt and clasped Cassian’s forearm to help him to his feet.

They stood a moment, looking warily. _Something_ about Cassian at her back, by her side, pulled on her… the slight greyness of his face, haunting in his eyes… were they so different from how he _always_ was (after combat)? _…Not now, I’m sorry; soon._ They searched the bodies until they found the package, then vanished into the city to get back to their ship.

In hyperspace, she finally asked.

“My gun jammed,” he said. “Don’t know how. I’d just run maintenance. Might just have to replace it.”

“Wow,” she said. “Using the tiniest portion of your actual allotment of equipment…!”

He gave her a look.

“Well,” she said, “that was a nice move, anyway. The last one.”

His look did its subtle curve into a smile. “I watch you. Also: thanks for saving me.”

“I thought we agreed not to keep score?” Her mouth didn’t feel like smiling, so she tried to project it from her eyes, as he usually did. “I think I’d come up short.”

“You wouldn’t.”

They were mutually relieved when they let that line of conversation taper off.

But during their rest hours, Jyn was woken by crashing in the cargo hold. She ran and slapped the access panel. There was Cassian punching out empty packing crates, with a wildness in his tense face that made her unable to tell if he was awake or asleep.

She called to him. He didn’t seem to hear. He threw himself forward in a way that would surely get him hurt. She ducked in under his fists, grabbed him and pinned his arm.

He struggled—but now awake not to risk striking her. He hissed through clenched teeth, “Don’t touch me… don’t wanna hurt you…”

“Like to see you try it,” she grunted back, automatically, though stunned at _Cassian_ making a threat.

 _“No,”_ he croaked. “I _Don’t Want To”_

…and she realised it wasn’t a threat. Of course it wasn’t. It was a plea. _I’m too dangerous, please save yourself, from me, please_

He jolted in her grasp, like he wanted to break away. She hugged him so hard, his heels nearly lifted off the ground. His body—so hard but thin, carved from hypervigilance and deprivation, built only to fight or run—felt turned to metal against her. Exposed wire endings practically sparked between them. He let out a sound somewhere between a growl and a yell.

She held on.

His knees finally buckled and she sank down with him _(like they had in the sand)._ She relaxed her hold on his arm. She put her cheek to his back. He hyperventilated, and fell apart. She released any remaining restraint and just held him. She might have murmured reassurances and rocked him like the child neither had gotten to be.

When he was still, she whispered, “Carida?” He answered by turning to her, pressing his palm to her spine and his face to her breastbone, shuddering.

She mentally retrieved what, only once, he’d said… the little boy over his father’s body trying to use a useless toy blaster. _Firing at the monsters but it doesn’t work. They just keep closing in._ Unable to hold the boy, she took all of the man her smaller frame could envelop and pressed her lips to his temple.

Somewhere, for some reason, he groaned, _“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”_ She couldn’t think of what to whisper back.

She stayed vigilant, like she was standing above him to ward off assailants, still. They started to sag against each other. She drew him to a bunk and laid him down. And he put out his arm inviting (entreating) her. A moment stunned, then conflicted, then giving in to herself—she lay down into his arms and buried her face under his chin. He bowed his head over her, as if his arms weren’t enough, he would hold her with his neck and torso and ankles and everything. His inhalations brought his chest to hers. She arched her back to deepen it, let him fill the chasm in her there. When she felt him tremble, she shifted them, until she lay on her back and took his head to her chest; give him _her_ heartbeat, now, and run her hand through his hair. He draped his arm limply across her, not confining at all, and she held him in her arms, against her body, as he sank bonelessly upon her. The scratch of his shadow felt soothing on her chest, through the part in her tunic. They breathed together, pulses echoing too. _Absolute reality._

They parted for the unforgiving proximity alert… and she blinked at the feel of him pressing the quickest kiss to her hair.

His new bruised wrist _might_ have been from the planetside skirmish. He’d never say.

* * *

She looked up at the noisy footsteps.

Cassian appeared in the cabin door. She’d been about to speak, then sat up in surprise. He was breathing as hard as if he’d run. His eyes were dilated and looked almost fevered. His hands opened and closed agitatedly at his sides.

“What is it?” she asked. Like she didn’t already know.

The way he looked at her… with a kind of helplessness no one else had ever seen on Captain Andor and no one would believe… Like a wave, she felt his _want._ Powerful, pulling, as anything in the universe…

Did she look like that when she was staring at him?

Did he see anything like she did when he looked at _her?_

His hands clenched, white-knuckled, and he took a suppressing breath.

_Say it? Will one of us say it?_

“Sorry,” he said. “To wake you. I shouldn’t have.”

She let out a breath, that she managed to shape into his name.

“No… false alarm. Sorry. Go back to sleep.” With what would look to anyone else like the easiest grace, Cassian turned around. Every microsignal showed her it was as great an effort as he’d ever made.

Leaving Jyn to stare after him.

* * *

Jyn stood, empty-handed, arms loose, in the middle of his room. Back here again at last. Maybe really _last._ She’d not entered the passkey herself. She’d chosen to knock. He’d opened the door, looking surprised that it was her, yet moving aside for her to enter without a word. He came back into the room, to avoid (even now) being between her and the door. Neither one sat down.

Finally, she made herself look at him. "I can't do this anymore.”

Cassian, stoic, unhappy. “Neither can I.”

In all her projections of this moment, somehow she hadn’t anticipated that. First ten seconds: plans blown to vapour.

Feeling like a traitor, but she couldn’t continue without it: “Which ‘this’ do _you_ mean?”

He didn’t protest. But his face was impossible even for her to read. “Not talking to you. I could hold back indefinitely when I thought it was just me, but… I’m not sure anymore. Not finding out is… terrible.”

She saw, in a flash, things he’d told her, more he hadn’t; what she’d pieced together from his file, what others said about him; what she’d heard him whisper and scream in nightmares; ways he’d reacted to and what kinds of clues he’d openly amassed on _her._ But now...

He lifted his eyes. Was that light she saw in their depths wishful thinking? Was it just a reflection of hers? Did she _have_ any to give him, to reflect? _I want to but… what if I can’t? I don’t think I can be what you need… maybe not even what you want… do I give you the chance to find that out…_

“I’ll go back,” said Cassian. This was not a fight he wanted her to join on his behalf. He had to do it himself. “If you tell me to, I’ll… revert. And it won’t be holding back, because the only thing that’s essential to me is being your partner. Your friend. I don’t need anything else if that’s what’s right for you, too.”

 _Revert._ Meaning, all those times she’d suppressed what felt like idiotic, adolescent (mooning? lusting? longing) over him…

Cassian could be so silver-tongued, but that was just another mask, and they’d never do that to each other again. “Fuck… Jyn… if it’s _not…_ If we’re losing each other for fear of losing each other…”

_Oh shit, **is** that it…?_

“…then I’m too tired for that.”

…fuck…

_…you’re tired from everything you’ve lost already. Above all, losing Kaytoo. Can’t you see what it did to you? Can’t you see, you’ve done it enough, too much, already… you should be protecting yourself from each next time of it happening **again** …_

The way she could see his pulse in his neck… she could just reach out and touch him… but was that right? for him?

“Please,” he said. “Please talk to me.”

Jyn felt vapourised ocean in the air, too hard to breathe. “You are my friend. You’re my best friend. The only one I’ve ever had. And that’s already… more than I can bear. I can’t go deeper.” _You won’t find it in me. I’m just as messed up as you are._ “I won’t survive the loss, do you understand?”

She could feel radiating from his chest to the identical desire in hers: _I want to hold you…_ Galaxies—the same galaxy—reaching to itself from within each of them. He visibly grasped for words that wouldn’t manipulate but wouldn’t be a waste. “Can we _not_ lose each other? Can that be an option?”

“Not in this fucking universe.” Her skin was scouring as upthrown sand. “You know that, too.”

“I do.” No one had ever shown the same knowledge, understanding, recognition of that reality. Only them to each other. “I know,” he said, struggling over what he’d been told too many times, and couldn’t find better words even now that he was allowing it. _“Because_ everything ends, maybe we should take it while we can.”

She shook her head. _I can’t let you. If I open that wound you’ll bleed out._ “Not to keep on living.”

Frustrated at the confines of language, knowing the lack of it ’til now was worse… “Or maybe the opposite.”

Jyn closed her eyes. “You said you were tired… I am too. I’m too tired… to… bear this. Bear anything.”

_When **not** doing is as—more—unbearable than doing… can’t be reversed anymore, if it—_

Cassian was silent long enough, that she finally opened her eyes again.

“Couldn’t I try to help?” he said at last. “Bear it too? I can’t take it from you but I could stand beside you. That’s what you and I do. Isn’t it?”

 _Dammit. You—_ “Even in that metaphor. That makes it _less_ possible. For us… for me, if you should leave. —be taken away. …You’re the one, the only one, who’s always come back. Let that stay true forever.” _If **I’m** the one to leave._

…Not-talking had failed them. But now Talking had failed them, too. Cassian said nothing.

Jyn’s atoms were about to sift apart. She bit her cheek ’til it bled, then turned away and pressed the door access.

He didn’t try to stop her.

She stepped out and let the door close behind her.

Jyn stood there with the planet turning under her feet. She felt it. She felt the sky pass around her. The planet’s core flowed and burned. The stars hurt her. _Didn’t they just_

_Always_

_All the way_

She turned around. Her hand had almost reached the lockpanel when the door opened from the other side. Cassian stood there with his hand on the access. It dropped. They stared at each other.

The elevator. The openness. Spilling from their eyes, the universe finding itself across the divide. …and they saw each other: . little Partisan girl . little Separatist boy . how could you feel betrayed by reality so early having so little grasp of it . but the formative bedrock understanding not to trust it . associating loving someone with their doom . maybe my fault for imposing the love, challenging the universe . maybe I’m the idiot who deserved what I got for ignoring the lesson .

…but those relationships, those people, had reality beyond the loss of them. How had she forgotten that? Before Akshaya and Hadder died, they’d reminded Jyn of herself, and proved the possibility of ‘home’ was never gone if she could bear to seek it. Before Kaytoo died, he’d shown Cassian that he didn’t need any prior knowledge to experience _family._

He wasn’t looking to her for absolution or justification. He didn’t want her for some kind of closure or reward. He feared ever treating her like such a means to an end—as anything other than herself.

They couldn’t protect each other from themselves. They needn’t. Because shared hurts, understandings, shards, _was_ protection. _It’s not just you. Even when it causes pain, in ourselves or each other, that’s neither of us alone in it. I’m right here beside you._ In spite of the universe and life and themselves, maybe the most terrifying, courageous victory was giving _up_ resistance.

She stepped back through the doorway and grabbed him in her arms. He caught her in his, holding her so tight she had to stand on her toes. She backed them up to hit the panel with her shoulderblade. The door closed.

One of them moved in to kiss and the other met them. They kissed until they couldn’t breathe. And then just a little more.

Jyn finally broke away for breath. “If we do this,” she panted, “that’s it. No coming back”

His face wasn’t grey. There was such colour now on his mouth, across his cheeks, shining through. “I know.”

“I mean it. I won’t ever want to sleep without holding you until I wake. Not on base, not in a ship, not parting for missions, nothing.”

He bowed his head to put their eyes on the exact same plane. His tired brown eyes that had seen too much, but stayed open for the hope of seeing something better. They saw her, now. “So no more parting. For anything.” His breath mixed with hers. “Where you go, I go.”

She wanted to believe. _Mama, let me believe._

Cassian drew back his head to look in her eyes. No matter how the rest of him trembled, the gaze was solid. “I can’t speak for the universe. Only for me. Nothing I can fight is gonna get me away from you. Not myself. Not an enemy. Not the _Alliance._ Stay or leave. I’ll be beside you.”

She stared. She put her hands on his cheeks. They stared more.

She kissed him and put him back on his heels. He backed up until his calves hit the mattress. They laid each other down.

He gave her his body, his hands, his mouth, and she opened herself to all of him. When he put his palms between her legs and she lay, without defense, back, and his beard gently scratched inside her thighs but oh his mouth, his tongue, at the peak of her, spreading her like honey; her hands in his hair, pulling him up at her vertex as if he could possibly be closer, digging her feet into the bed to push _push oh there more there_ herself against him, more movement than she’d ever allowed herself even in dreams, but her hips digging hard and whole body arching, riding in waves, from the cradle of her pelvis where the sweetwaterwarmth of him lapped and pooled… and she wanted, needed, to climax so badly, radiating unknotting where he lavished it… but she felt her walls contracting on themselves, on nothing, the cold air on her breasts, and she wanted him not just inside but also in her arms between her breasts against her stomach heart lips. She gasped and tugged on his hair so he looked up, and she couldn’t form words but pulled him over her; and he came up like the tide, sliding his body along hers; his body that was both too tough and too fragile for this Galaxy, fine, let her hold and keep it now; and she dug her feet into his thighs and cupped her hips and scooped him in without any manual guidance; her arch and his thrust slid him inside.

She was happy (transportingly, transcendentally) to do it, this time, his way.

And as his chest heaved and heart thudded against hers, his elbows braced to frame her, his palms flowed up to both of her cheeks, and for a moment he held them both motionless, looking deep into her eyes: his dark like the sky reflecting and reaching down to the green deeps of her sea. And then he bowed to her, and kissed her like the foaming surf, as he furthered the bend of his neck and back into the gentlest of pushes, rubbing up along her outside and in. And she felt utterly useless but couldn’t help melting into it… and he only breathed harder, and kissed fluidly deeper, and began their rolling, building tide; gentle, inexorable, kindling and building higher and higher between them inside her toward the crest.

She hadn’t meant to say it. Not for the first time, as a moment of passion. She’d wanted it more… deliberate… more… unmixed and decisive, uncompromised by autonomic influence. _Absolutely real_ — But fuck it. She did. Perfection wasn’t required. Mistakes wouldn’t make them break. She gasped out, “I love you.”

Before she could second-guess or curse herself, he’d seized her in another kiss, his hips stuttering, cock positively jolting inside her, then he breathed back, “I love you.”

And she contracted upon him, around him, inside herself and outside them both. And knew it didn’t matter how they said anything ‘first’. They’d say it again, later, in other ways, in other contexts, with less adrenal influence and more control. Letting it be an expression of possibly multiple things, right now, wasn’t a misstep or a trap. It would be different, with its own meanings, no matter what, every single time. As long as every single time had the common thread. Of _partners._

_Protected. We help and hold each other. It’s okay. To feel. It all. Let go._

Anyway, it _wasn’t_ the first time they’d said it. In ways other than words, they already had.

She doubled over, upward, almost in half, as if to take the entirety of him to her, squeezing around him and groancrying out; and he pressed her and she felt his gasp and how he seized, and they burst, crested, broke, between them, there.

When neurons could function again. They lay folded into each other. And Jyn whispered again, “I won’t survive this.”

Cassian hugged her as if he could never get her close enough. He breathed, truly asking: “Can it be _how_ we survive?”

_Yes, beautiful idiot, that’s what I mean… because—_

With sudden revelation, nearly laughing with the _liberation_ of it, the option she hadn’t realised she could seek, Jyn exhaled back, “…or maybe I’m tired of ‘surviving’. Just on its own. Maybe it’s okay to risk it again. Risk more.”

Cassian buried his face in her neck. He kissed her there, on her pulse, the hinge of her jaw, below her ear, on her cheek. She turned her face to meet their lips.

Millimetres from her skin, he whispered again, “I never want to lose us as friends. I never want to lose each other at all. I can’t know. I can’t promise. But I’ll try. And I hope.”

She put her face to his chest, closing her eyes to listen with relief to the same heartbeat that, on that beach, had sung her home.

“And I can trust,” she murmured back.

* * *

> Jyn dreamed of walking behind Princess Leia, through the cave network of Sullust. Leia stepped aside, gesturing for Jyn to pass her. And Jyn stepped into a vaulted chamber covered in kyber crystals, glowing with its own light.
> 
> From her examination of an outcrop, a half-remembered figure stood.
> 
> “You found me,” said Nari Sable, smiling in a way Jyn couldn’t possibly remember but moved her to the core.
> 
> “I guess so,” said Jyn. “Probably Leia or Verlaine did.”
> 
> “No. It was you.” Nari set down her tools and crossed to Jyn with open hands. Jyn took them. They felt like… nothing… but Nari’s eyes were warm.
> 
> “Now, I can take you to her,” said Nari.
> 
> Being a dream, there was no transition; before Nari was releasing Jyn’s hands to sit her down, looking down into a reflecting pool, beside Lyra.
> 
> “Thank you for finding her,” said Lyra. “She was one of my best friends, you know.”
> 
> “I know,” said Jyn, feeling tears prick her eyes. “I was looking… for you.”
> 
> “I know, my love.” Lyra reached to brush the hair back from Jyn’s face, even if she never quite reached her. “I can still be glad.”
> 
> “How,” said Jyn, “could she have been your best friend… but you never saw her again?”
> 
> “Friendships needn’t die when their circumstances change,” said Lyra. “Your father was my best friend, before and after he became my husband.”
> 
> “That’s possible? For someone to be both?”
> 
> Lyra smiled, sad and joyful and full of love. “It’s the most wonderful when it’s both. Of course someone can be your best friend, ‘special friend’, partner, lover, all at once. It’s good to have other friends, too. One person shouldn’t be your whole universe. But they can have whole universes within them. That meet and expand your own. You know that, my heart. You saw it.”
> 
> “Yes.” She did. Though could she survive her own universe without the part that lived in him…?
> 
> “I don’t want to lose him,” said Jyn. “I don’t want to lose myself.”
> 
> Lyra finally reached her. She cupped Jyn’s cheek and kissed her forehead.
> 
> “You won’t lose yourself,” she said. “Even if you lose him. I know you’re so tired, you’ve had to do it so much. It’s so hard, Stardust. But I’m so proud of you for trying again. Do you love him?”
> 
> “Very. Yes. Always.”
> 
> Lyra pressed another kiss, this one smiling, to Jyn’s face. “I’m glad. My darling. Survivors reunify. Defend each other. Trust the Force.”
> 
> “I think I do.” Jyn felt her own smile at last, too. “I do.”

* * *

> Hi. Jyn. It’s... _(breath)_ me.
> 
> Will you even…
> 
> I don’t know if I… if anything I say can matter so much. But I guess you’re not going anywhere right now. So… I’ll try...
> 
> You’re going to be fine. I shouldn’t be afraid. You’ve been through… maybe worse… Maybe I can’t know what you have. It’s just hard to… see… you, so…
> 
> I’m sorry if I did the same. They say you stayed with me. …They found you with me, when…
> 
> Skies. What am I doing. You can’t hear me. And if you could, what a cowardly way to…?
> 
> But. I want to talk to you. I don’t know what to say. Maybe words aren’t what matters. I just want… you to hear me, and I want to be able to hear you.
> 
> I’ve known you twelve days. We were only both conscious for five of them. That’s ridiculous.
> 
> It might… deceive. Not you or me, deceiving, but… both of us. It feels like more. Sharing… such… eventful moments… It can go either way: bind people more tightly, or crack without foundation. Of something… slower… smaller… I don’t know… maybe that’s other people’s lives, not ours. We take what we can. Maybe we really need both...
> 
> But I…
> 
> I want…
> 
> …I know.
> 
> I want to learn. Everything. The slow way. The long way. Build that foundation.
> 
> But even without it. If we never get that. If this is all. That’s enough. I’d do anything for you. I _want_ to do anything for you. I want… everything… _with_ you.
> 
> I don’t know if you’d say… I can’t try to guess… What _I_ might say, to anyone else…
> 
> Force. I don’t know. I’ve done it all before. Everything else. And I know.
> 
> I know. None of it was like… you.
> 
> I don’t know if I’ll see you awake again. I know you’ll wake up. Because they said, and you’re so strong… and because you _have_ to. You have to, Jyn.
> 
> I hope I’m there. I hope so badly to be there. And… that you might want me there.
> 
> But either way.
> 
> I thought if I ever lost Kaytoo, I’d be done. He was the best friend, maybe the only friend, I ever had. And I reprogrammed him myself. That didn’t make _him_ any less my best friend, but it has to beg the question, right? What kind of person _I_ was. If anyone else could ever consider _me_ their friend, too.
> 
> Mon Mothma said that she didn’t think you know the effect you have, on others. What you’ve done…. what I’ve seen you do… what you’ve done for _me…_
> 
> But that’s not it… not why… you’ve done so much but that’s not… Your _impact_ isn’t all that matters. Not what it does to anyone else. Not to me. It’s not about me at all. It’s _you…_
> 
> If I never get to be… what I’d want, for—with you. Or you don’t want me to be. I’ll still be grateful for you, forever.
> 
> Thank you. For… Among the rest of it, maybe the least to the Galaxy, but not to me. Thank you for being my friend. I hope I was one to you.
> 
> I hope.
> 
> Wake up. Whether you stay with m—us, or go. Just please be in the Galaxy.
> 
> …Bye for now, Jyn. Whether _you’re_ still here when I’m done with this one… I’ll come back. I want to always come back. To you.

* * *

Jyn levered herself into the co-pilot seat, as Cassian threw the last pre-flight switches. He hit the comm to announce, _“Black Rook,_ pulling away.”

“Godspeed,” said the dispatcher.

They lifted off and had soon cleared atmo.

“Commencing _Operation: Winter,”_ came Verlaine’s voice over the comm. “Be safe out there.”

“You too,” said Cassian.

“See you at the first candidate,” said Jyn.

“Aye aye, Cap ‘n’ Jyn.” Verlaine went to lightspeed. A few controls later, Jyn and Cassian did too.

Jyn sat back in her chair, watching the starlines. “This feels too good to be true. Safe, nonviolent, helping people without hurting any… Are we _actually_ surveying new planets? Or is this gonna turn out to be a surprise honeymoon thing?”

Cassian shot her a sidelong smirk. “First: You tell me. You were in at the ground level when Leia started planning this.”

“It was just a fantasy at first.” She glanced back with a tentative spark. “A hope.”

“Well. You know what they say about those.”

“I do. …Was there a second?”

His look sparked back at hers. “ ‘Honeymoon’?”

Her mouth went a little dry. She powered through. “Doesn’t saying you won’t do certain kinds of missions anymore count in Rebelspeak as getting married?”

He exhaled a laugh. “Maybe. A start.”

They let that hang in companionable silence. Jyn looked more out the viewscreen. She was still working on trusting that sometimes, some moments, you didn’t have to build yourself up to. Didn’t have to triple check your weapons and shields. Sometimes, you could just… go with it. And, in the right company, still be protected.

After a moment, she leaned over and keyed something into the datacomp.

It flashed for Cassian’s attention. He looked down to read.

> < . ni kar’tayli gar darasuum, riduur . >

Jyn braced back in her chair, suddenly wondering if she’d done something that—

Cassian raised his eyes to Jyn’s again. His were open all the way. The galaxy looking out through them embraced the one in her. He said softly, “I love you, too.”

Jyn, in relief, returned his smile and held out her hand. He took it. Their fingers twined. Jyn’s smile broadened and brightened ‘til she felt it and saw it reflected in him. “Well… Here we go.”

**Author's Note:**

> I finally looked this up: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/150723/how-much-time-passes-in-rogue-one  
> (but don't fear, none of the rest of this fic tracks with actual timelines)
> 
> Diff. between an alias and a cover from _[True and False](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13108311/chapters/29989908)_ by [ephemera (incognitajones)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/incognitajones/pseuds/ephemera)
> 
> Glass-flower dream inspired by _Southern Reach 3: Acceptance_ by Jeff Vandermeer
> 
> Mothma telling Jyn “I won’t forget what we did to you” from the R1 graphic novel. Mothma saying of Jyn, “I don’t think she knew the effect she had on others…”[ from the novelization](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jyn_Erso#Personality_and_traits).
> 
> “Eyes that are tired because they've seen too much but stay open hoping to see better” paraphrased from former K2-RPmate retrorenegade
> 
> Evaan Verlaine and the Alderaanian-survivor mission are from the [Princess Leia Marvel comic series](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Princess_Leia_1). Cameo mentions: Leia’s adopted sister Winter is from the _Dark Force (“Thrawn”)_ trilogy by Timothy Zahn, Nari Sable is from _Catalyst_ by James Luceno, and Cara Dune is from _The Mandalorian_
> 
> [Mando’a glossary](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mando%27a/Legends):  
>  _nar dralshy’a_ \- put your back into it/try harder  
>  _Ib’tuur jatne tuur ash’ad kyr’amur!_ \- today is a good day for someone else to die  
>  _di’kutla_ \- idiotic  
>  _ori’vod_ \- special friend (vs. _riduur_ \- partner, spouse)  
>  _ni kar’tayli gar darasuum_ \- literally “I know you forever”; idiomatically “I love you”
> 
> Finally: [weaponized handsomeness - I didn't make it up](https://64.media.tumblr.com/e329a6e2f9b0fd160306ee7257ff3591/b5519e570c06c071-1b/s400x600/270d2021656ec666a73753cc706bb92151d19ead.png)


End file.
